Yesterday Sing Clifton sang my arrangement of Loch Lomond and it’s been such a long journey that here’s a little post about it.

Of course part of it is the whole year that was 2020 and happened to most everyone — our last concert until yesterday was Christmas 2019 and we came out of that really on a high, singing strongly and with plans for more and more ambitious songs that seemed very much within reach.  Hence this, a SSATB fairly complex and super long-breathed a cappella piece — and the 15 minute Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat arrangement that also finally made it to public performance yesterday, which I think divides SSAATTBB at a few points..

But I actually started this arrangement… I guess 2012?  Anyway I remember sitting on a bus back and forth from my job as a learning support assistant, planning this alongside reading and rereading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, and planning out a novel the concept of which was basically the same thing, but with women, but set in 1800s Bristol.  Sadly never completed, whoops.  But I did finish this.  And it’s funny to think back on now how I… thought I knew what I was doing writing for choirs and kinda sorta, sure, but also yikes.  But I was definitely, as they say, having a lot of feelings.  And I think that comes across in the best way.

(I was planning on doing a whole set — and I actually did make an exuberant arrangement of some kind of Ye Jacobites by Name too … that one very likely might need a fair bit of revising if I dig it out again, but maybe I should.)

But it’s like a lot of older pieces that I’ve polished up again lately …… that in itself is weird to say — I never used to have any interest in returning to old things and revising/developing, but I’ve done it with a few game pieces lately, and this a couple years back… ….Anyway, like other pieces too—while I had to reign in some of the really not vocally compassable lines, think about spacing, BREATHING, range and stuff like that… I kept a lot.  The outline and a lot more.  And like all these older pieces, I put a LOT of work into them back when and I think that showed — also a bit of slightly naive/fearless imagination/unashamedness in the simplicity of the harmonies etc.  That wordless bridge!!  I don’t know if I’d do that now, if I’d have the nerve — but maybe I’ll consider it, now I hear how it actually can sound.

All that to say that it’s a piece that’s been arranged a lot and will be again* ….  But especially now I’ve had it rehearsed and performed and enjoyed by the choir, I feel like there’s definitely a place for this arrangement, it works.

* I suppose I can beg a little originality because I’ve chosen some of the lesser used words, I think?  Vs the “me and my true love will never meet again” which I guess I wasn’t in the mood for.  There’s one version/interpretation of two imprisoned soldiers, one who is to be executed and one let free, and that’s the meaning of returning home to Scotland by the “high” or “low” road.  You can think of that here — with the added background it seems that these two knew each growing up and the first verses are describing an idyllic childhood — they parted, and now meet again, but for the last time….  …Or, hey, “wae is my heart until we meet again”; maybe they will meet again after all, and it’s okay:)  

By yon bonnie banks and by yon bonnie braes
Where the sun shines bright on Loch Lomon’
Oh we two hae passed sae mony blithesome days
On the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’

I mind where we parted in yon shady glen
By the steep, steep sides of Ben Lomon’
Where in purple hue the hieland hills we view
And the moon comin’ out in the gloamin’

Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
But wae is my heart until we meet again
On the bonnie bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’

(Hum)

Oh the wee bird may sing and the wild roses spring
And in sunshine the waters are sleepin’
But broken hearts ken nae second spring again,
And the world does na ken how we’re greetin’.

(Aah…)

And the world does na ken how we’re greetin’.

Oh ye’ll take the high road and I’ll take the low
And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye.
But wae is my heart until we meet again
On the bonnie bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomon’

I’ve also tried to strike a balance, maybe controversially, with the lyrics of having a bit of a “flavour” of the Scots, but keeping much of it close to the English of my English choir.  I suggest performing with your usual choir “round” vowels without attempting an accent as such, but to sing the words as written, noting spellings and apostrophes off the ends of words.

You can download this arrangement to sing with your choir here on Sheet Music Plus.